DOPOTO REPORTS: MYSTERIES ABOUND IN TANZANIA. ALBINO HUNTING AND WITCH DOCTORS

We here at The Department of Pointing Out The Obvious (DOPOTO) figured that the trade in tiger parts and tiger farming for dubious medicinal purposes in China is about as backwards as you can get in the 21st Century. It turns out that's not the case. Tiger farming has been outdone easily in the backward and macabre department by the use of human bodies in good luck potions. In Tanzania, witch doctors (!) seek out human albino body parts. Since March of this year, 25 albinos have been murdered with machetes, the latest being a 7 month old baby butchered on the orders of a witch doctor. Their belief is that potions made from the legs, hair, hands and blood of a human albino can make a person rich quickly. No mention is made of the fact that in Tanzania nobody seems to get rich other than witch doctors selling expensive albino potions.

Tanzania, a nation blessed with fertile land, seaports, gold and diamond deposits as well as natural gas reserves, somehow manages to place 178th out of 192 places in per-capita income in the world. That nation makes Haiti seem wealthy by comparison. Not a huge surprise in a country that has witch doctors and kills and dismembers albinos for luck. What is a mystery is why no one has taken their machetes to the witch doctors yet, presumably the traditional Tanzanian method of lodging a medical malpractice complaint. No further study of that question is currently planned at DOPOTO, content in the knowledge that Tanzania is really far away and the people there are too poor and too distracted by albino hunting to travel here. Our official position is that this is one of life's mysteries, but the truth is that we really don't want to know. The Department Of Pointing Out The Obvious has, however, issued an official warning to Johnny and Edgar Winter not to tour Tanzania any time soon.

This tawdry fiasco has led DOPOTO to briefly explore another mystery, the proliferation of machetes in Third World nations. Outside of cutting sugar cane and clearing thick jungle brush, the machete has few practical applications, although it has been widely adapted as "the poor man's sword." Why any man, poor or otherwise, would consider using a sword in today's world of laser-sighted rifles, machine guns and heat-seeking missiles is a further mystery and perhaps a ready explanation of why some armies are a lot more effective than others.

There is some evidence in nations with a high rate of illiteracy that clever enemies have convinced some armies that the Geneva Convention prohibits the use of firearms in warfare, even going as far as waving an official looking piece of paper at them (which in reality, is a flyer for an aluminum siding contractor) to convince them to use only machetes in their war or face annihilation by United Nations troops armed only with blue helmets. Primitive illiterates being an extremely superstitious lot, have a paralyzing fear of blue helmets and so agree to lay down their guns and use only machetes. After that, the war usually goes pretty smooth for the side that can read and uses modern weapons. So perhaps the solution in Tanzania is to arm all albinos with automatic weapons and bolt a cowbell around the witch doctors' necks as an early warning system. We here at DOPOTO do try to help wherever we can, no matter how strong the temptation to roll into a fetal position and wail at the madness of this world.